How To Use Your Mac As A Camera Bag Of Photo Tricks, Styles, Filters, And Effects

Danger, Will Robinson. There are too many photo enhancing apps. It’s official. Let the confusion begin.

Just when I think my collection of a couple of dozen photo effects apps is complete, along comes another one that pretty much does what the others do. Improve your photos with tricks, styles, filters, and effects.

When iPhoto Isn’t Enough

Let’s be honest. If you really care about the quality of your photography– those photos you keep, store, upload, or share with friends and family– then iPhoto isn’t enough.

On my growing list of Mac apps to enhance my photos is one called CameraBag.

It’s misnamed. Maybe it should be called Dark Room, or Photo Magic, or something more descriptive.

CameraBag brings many dozens of photographic development and enhancing tools to your Mac. There are over 100 built-in styles and filters.

Customization is the name of the photographic game, and CameraBag lets you create filters and effects tools, and gives you over two dozen additional tools.

Adjustments are non-destructive and the tools are easy to use (though more difficult to master; there are many, many options).

By stacking different effects you create custom filters which can be added to your personal toolset and used again with a click.

The controls are straightforward. Buttons and sliders. Filters are implemented using layers so mixing and matching and stacking specific filters generates different effects.

Click on each of the images above for a larger, pop up view of effects and controls.

CameraBag gives you multiple viewing options, too. Side-by-side comparisons, large previews on mouseover, and a Remix slider which smooths transitions between variations.

The built-in styles give you additional control over settings and strength of filters. All the filters you add are displayed in the tray so you can see how many filters have been applied to a photo.

These functions are packed into a 32-bits-per-channel, multi-threaded image processor, so most effects are visible instantly. It works great on JPEGs, of course, but also handles RAW files.

Some of the filters provide film-like smoothness and color which isn’t easily obtained in many of the Mac photo editors.

If iPhoto just isn’t enough to make you a photographer rock star, spend a few bucks on CameraBag.

5G? Meh!

About Ron McElfresh

My first Mac was the 128k model (from 1984, so I'm old). I live and work in Honolulu, Hawaii. Read more of my articles here. Read more Mac stuff on McSolo, or a little thoughtful nonsense on McElfresh.org.